In the impersonal world of e-commerce, immediate and intelligent feed-forward to a consumer concerning his or her demands and choices is often lacking. Typically, a consumer of goods or services who uses a computer to find a supplier of goods or services, uses a global computer network (such as the Internet or its World Wide Web). During the consumer's search of the information available on the global computer network, the consumer often enters a choice or defines a need and if there are no available matches, the consumer simply gets an error message, or alternatively is told that no matches exist. This often leads to the consumer going elsewhere for his desired goods or services. An additional problem is that such impersonal, non-responses can lead to a decreasing likelihood that the consumer will look for help on the global computer network in the future.
Even where some feed-forward is given, many search tools and database searching programs simply give a blanket response of “hits” (hits are defined herein as the number of available matches which meet the user's input criteria). In such a case, even where a number of hits is presented, or a list of the results is provided, the user does not know which of the input criteria was the most or least limiting. This lack of intelligent feed-forward often leads to wasted time by the user, inefficient (or inaccurate) search results, and overall less value to all of the parties involved.
Take, for example, the situation where a user of the Internet finds a site and wishes to purchase an airline ticket. The user might enter for the search the two airports involved with the desired route, and the departure and return dates. The search might yield zero hits. At this point, the user has no idea why no flights match his criteria. It could be that all flights between the airports on those particular dates are booked. It could be that no flights are ever available between those two airports. It could be that a departure flight seat is available but that no return seats on the desired return date is available. In this situation, assuming the user wants to continue, he or she must guess at which criteria (i.e. airport selection, departure date, or return date) has caused the “zero hit” response. This is inefficient and frustrating for the consumer.
Furthermore, the above-described problem is magnified geometrically when more than two criteria are used. Imagine the situation where someone is trying to find a provider of a bicycle tour and this individual wants a mountain-bike trip through a Brazilian Rain Forest the first week of August. The provider of the trip must arrange for the food and supplies for the consumer, a spouse, and three young children at a total cost of less then $5000. Preferably, but not necessarily, the trip provider would pick up the consumer's family at the airport and put them up in a hotel the first night. Less important, but still preferred by the consumer, is that the food provided during the trip be authentic for that geographical area. This level of criteria, if entered all at once, or even incrementally, into a typical search method would often lead to frustration as the user of a conventional search method would never know which of the criteria was causing the limited number of hits (or, perhaps, no hits).
Therefore, an improved method would allow intelligent feed-forward to the user of the method so as to allow that user to make informed decisions and changes as the search progresses.